CHIDAMBARAM, INDIA, March 1, 2014 (The Hindu): The hallowed precincts of Lord Nataraja Temple at Chidambaram started reverberating with the 33rd edition of the Natyanjali festival from Thursday. The five-day event that would go on till March 3 will feature performances of exponents, drawn from various parts of the country as well as from abroad, of classical dance forms such as Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Koodiyattam and Mohiniattam.

Madras High Court Judge Justice V. Ramasubramanian in his chief guest address said that the "Dance of Lord Nataraja actually portrays the elementary particles in their eternal and constant dance of creation, preservation and dissolution." The Judge further said that the parallel between Siva's dance and the dance of atomic particles was first discussed elaborately by Fritjof Capra, an Austrian-born American physicist and founding director of the Centre for Eco Literacy at Berkeley, California, titled "The Dance of Siva: The Hindu view of matter in the light of modern physics" published in 1972.

Capra explained the connection between modern physics and eastern mysticism. Siva's cosmic dance thus became the central metaphor in his international best-seller "The Tao of Physics," first published in 1975 and was still in print in over 40 editions around the world. For the modern physicists the dance of Siva is the dance of subatomic matter.

The Judge also noted that on June 18, 2004, an unusual new landmark was unveiled at CERN (European Centre for Research in Particle Physics) in Geneva. "The 2-meter tall statue of Lord Nataraja, given by the Indian Government, is a dancing Deity representing the cosmic cycle of creation and dissolution and also depicting the dynamic of subatomic particles, the basis of creation of the universe that is being researched by physicists the world over," the Judge said.

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